replace text string and rewrite file script

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

Hi all,
I'm looking for a script that'll recursively search files in a directory structure and replace all occurances of a string to the current hostname.

for example I've got around 30 files with a text string enter_hostname and I want a script that when I run the script with for example
./script -old enter_hostname -new hostname -recurse thisdir

I use find . * |xargs grep enter_hostname to search for the hostname but it finds strings in binary files that I need to avoid rewriting.
I just want to rewrite text files.

any ideas/suggestions?

Later,
Bill

[Stefan Farrelly]

do a file * in the directory file and grep those that are described as ascii text only.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Bill:

A quick suggestion is to use 'file' to filter out non-ascii candidates from your process stream. I know how much you hate 'awk', so:

For example:

# file /etc/hosts|awk '{print $2}'

...returns ascii

# file /usr/bin/vi|awk '{print $2}'

...returns s800

Regards!

...JRF...

[Sachin Patel]

Hi Bill,
you can use command "/usr/bin/file" to check for ascii or binary.

Sachin

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

okay I got that much, but what I want to do is get the script together that'll rewrite the file with the new hostname.

I've got to do some sort of file io script that
seds the file perhaps and replaces all occurances of string with newstring... and then rewrites the file.

At the moment, I list all files, then vi them all and use :1:$/s/oldstring/newstring/g
in vi.
I want a script to do it...

Later,
Bill

[Stefan Farrelly]

Once youve identified the ascii text filenames then simply do;

cat | sed 's///g' >

[Thom Cornwell]

$ for f in $(file *|grep ascii|cut -d":" -f1)
> do
> ex ${f} > done

where exscript contains your vi command

[Robin Wakefield · Accepted solution]

find . -type f | xargs file | grep ascii | cut -d: -f 1 | while read file ; do
sed "s/oldname/newname/g" $file > $file.new
mv $file.new $file
done

would do it.

Robin.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Bill:

#!/usr/bin/sh
#
typeset OLD=$1
typeset NEW=$2
#
for F in *
do
if [ `file $F|awk '{print $2}'` = ascii ]
then
sed "s/$OLD/$NEW/g" $F > ${F}.new
mv $F.new $F
fi
done
#.end.

...JRF...